


Coping Mechanisms

by Moonlitdarksword



Category: RWBY
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Innuendo, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 14:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5970865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlitdarksword/pseuds/Moonlitdarksword
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Still in shock form her injuries, Yang keeps it together the only way she knows how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coping Mechanisms

If there were any places in Vale that could be considered safe, Blake silently prayed that this secluded corner would be one of them. Looking left and right, she leaned against the alabaster wall and gently let down her sleeping cargo. Taking a step back, she couldn’t help but cast another dumbfounded look to the bleeding stump. She had only got out of there about a minute ago, but Yang’s jacket and blouse were already drenched in scarlet. Bloody streaks rand down her flaxen locks, framing her serene, statuesque face that had taken on an ashen complexion. The injury had knocked her out almost immediately, likely from shock more than anything else. A tight knot formed in the Faunus’ stomach at the sight of it, followed by a deep, painful sting. Her Aura had managed to seal the wound for now, but that scabbing on her abdomen would hold out only as long as her power did. She needed to see a doctor, but not before Yang. No amount of Aura could regenerate a lost limb, save for the incredibly rare individuals who had Semblances that could do just that, and temporary wound-stemming would be moot if she wasn’t even conscious. Taking a steady breath, Blake reached for a knot of lace within her hair, and knew what needed to be done.

Just then, the slumbering girl’s eyes flickered, and the pools of lilac opened slowly.  
‘Hey, Blakey,’ she mumbled sleepily, smirking slightly as regarded her teammate. ‘Whatcha doing?’  
‘You’re awake, that’s good,’ Blake noted breathlessly. Yang felt something winding tightly around her bicep. ‘Keep talking, stay with me,’  
‘What are you talking about?’ Yang asked, confusion evident as she narrowed her eyes. ‘That guy back there stabbed you in the gut. You sure you’re alright?’ Another pang of guilt surged through Yang. Short-term memory loss was another symptom of shock, which was to be expected. Blake hated herself enough that it happened in the first place, but to make her relive it...  
‘I’m fine, Yang,’ she insisted, bringing her focus back onto dressing the wound. Yang only chuckled in response.  
‘I always knew you were a tough cookie,’ she said, letting her eyes wander as she looked at her partner’s cute ears and her beautiful face. ‘Though I wouldn’t mind if you’d swoon and fall into my arms—’  
That was when she noticed how prominent Blake’s second set of ears were. She noticed the guilty wince on her partner’s face, and followed her eyes down to her elbow, or indeed where it should have been. Her upper arm ended abruptly where Blake was tightly tying her bow into a tourniquet. A flood of memories rushed through Yang’s mind: the scream, the rage, the pain, and then the silence. Her eyes went wide, and her lips widened into an unstable smile as she continued to stare.  
‘Arm,’ she corrected herself, letting a small giggle as she tried to catch her breath. ‘Singular. Well shit, would you just look at that?’  
‘Try to stay calm, Yang,’ Blake urged her. Making this tourniquet was a delicate enough job as it was, and the worst thing Yang could do was panic. ‘Don’t look at it. Eyes on me. Try to keep talking.’ That last order wasn’t just a technique to keep her calm, but was also a strategy to prevent her from losing consciousness again.  
‘You know I’m mostly talk,’ Yang replied. Her voice was a little quieter, but it hadn’t lost its frantic edge. ‘Not my smartest move, to be honest. I kinda went out on a _limb_ there.’  
‘At least you admit it,’ Blake hissed as she pulled tightly on the lace cord, eliciting a wince form Yang as the pressure increased. ‘I haven’t told you everything about my time in the White Fang. You only have the tiniest idea how dangerous he—’ She stopped her admonishment, her face slackening as her mind analysed what Yang had just said. ‘Did...did you just...?’  
‘Make an arm joke?’ Yang completed Blake’s sentence. The Faunus simply leaned back, eyebrows shooting up and jaw dropping in utter incredulity.  
‘Now?’ she gasped. ‘Of all possible times...couldn’t you at least wait until you aren’t bleeding to death?’  
‘Then make sure I don’t,’ Yang responded nonchalantly, rolling the shoulder of her good arm. ‘You do your thing, and I’ll do mine.’

Blake forced herself back to the work of tying the tourniquet, giving Yang one last look before dedicating herself to it. Her pale face was coated in cold sweat, but despite the far-off look in her eyes, she wore the same wry smile as she always did. A lace ribbon really wasn’t an acceptable bandage, but hopefully she could use it to tie off the stump enough for her to get to a doctor. She just had to make sure she was patient enough to withstand whatever Yang could throw at her.  
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘at least I rub myself off with my left hand.’ Blake was not prepared for that. Her fingers almost lost their grip on the small ribbon as her cheeks began to heat up.  
‘Yang, don’t be disgusting,’ she reprimanded her patient, not looking up from the wound and making sure her tone of voice was deliberately neutral. Yang merely gave a sad chuckle.  
‘As kind as Lefty’s been to me, I’m gonna miss Righty,’ she groaned. ‘You could say I was really _attached_ to her.’  
‘Keep ‘em coming, Xiao Long,’ Blake encouraged drolly, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m almost done here.’  
‘You seem to know your stuff,’ Yang acquiesced. ‘I’ve gotta _hand_ that to you at least.’ As Blake prepared to pull to finish the tourniquet, Yang knotted her brow, narrowing her eyes as another bead of sweat rolled down her face.  
‘Yang, are you okay?’ Blake asked, wondering if she was losing consciousness. Yang blinked blearily, but her gaze was focused on Yang.  
‘I’m off my pun game,’ she confessed. Blake nodded in agreement. It was understandable considering how much blood she lost. ‘I could only come up with a _handful._ ’ Blake merely groaned as she put her left arm over her shoulder and hoisted her up.

Blake had once told Yang how disturbed she was by the sense of familiarity she felt during the debacle at the tournament. She remembered one time when a protest by the mayoral office in a small protectorate of Mistral had turned violent. She was only eleven years old at the time, and the security guard had been too rough in accosting her, despite her doing nothing to contribute to the chaos. It was Adam who got her out of it, when he tackled him down and smashed him in the face with a rock. A part of her still felt horrified when she recalled the event. He had spent the entire evening apologising to her. He had let his anger get the best of him, and he promised never to let it happen again. It was merely the first incident out of many.  
Yet when she had tried to stop the bleeding, a different sort of déjà vu had settled over her. She remembered walking by the medical tent wherever they had set up camp. She had expected to hear moans of pain and screams of anguish, and she had done so, but the one thing she had never expected to hear a howl of unabashed laughter. Out of curiosity, she poked her head in, and for next few minutes she watched, utterly fascinated as the medics mended a gruesome gash in a man’s leg. He seemed utterly unfazed by the agony he must have been in, constantly cracking jokes as the doctors worked. As Yang leaned on her shoulder as they limped down the empty, she hadn’t complained once. She never heard so much as a whimper, and Blake had an idea why.  
‘Yang?’ she spoke up.  
‘What’s the matter at _hand,_ Blake?’ Yang asked. Blake rolled her eyes yet again. She really was relentless.  
‘This is actually quite common, you know,’ she informed her.  
‘What, arm jokes?’ Yang raised an eyebrow.  
‘You’re using humour cope with stress,’ Blake clarified. ‘I can’t think of a more stressful thing than dismemberment, and I can tell just from the look in your eyes that you’re barely holding together, so anything that can help you keep your head on straight will come in _handy._ ’ Yang blinked in response, her lips curling in surprise.  
‘So the student learns from the master, eh?’ she teased. ‘But honestly, you’re probably right. Poke at any deeper psychological scars, and I’ll be breaking out the mom jokes. Mom jokes for days.’  
‘Mom jokes for days?’ Blake repeated, unsure how to respond.  
‘Don’t know, this has been my coping mechanism for as long as I can remember,’ Yang noted sombrely. ‘After that whole thing where I tried to look for my mom, our house was really quiet. It was like a tomb, Blake. No one talking, no one smiling. Then one day, I found an old joke book on a bookshelf in the lounge, and I spent a whole afternoon reading it. It was the first time I’d laughed in weeks.’ As she continued, a nostalgic smile spread across her face. ‘I went back to school, and I relayed its contents to everybody who’d listen. In a few days, I even saw my uncle Qrow smile, and everything seemed so much brighter! It was like...like...’  
‘The _mother_ of all discoveries?’ Blake ventured, wearing a slight smirk despite everything. Yang’s eyes shot open, and a knot of worry coiled inside Blake, instantly wondering whether or not she had gone too far. Suddenly, loud, rich, wonderful laughter erupted out, coming deep from Yang’s stomach.  
‘You are on fire tonight, Blake!’ Yang complimented her, small tears forming in the corner of her eyes. She made an awkward movement with her stump, and her smile drooped in realisation. ‘Oh shit, I forgot about that.’  
‘Let’s...’ Blake sighed, regret washing over her once again. ‘Let’s just get you to a doctor.’  
‘Yeah, I can cry my guts out once I get to a hospital bed,’ Yang admitted casually, gingerly taking her arm off Blake’s shoulder to quickly wipe her tears. She stumbled slightly, and Blake’s knees dipped as Yang put her weight back onto her shoulders. ‘This is gonna take some getting used to.’  
‘They’ll probably get some prosthetics for you,’ Blake consoled her.  
‘I guess,’ Yang sighed. She narrowed her eyes, her mind at work behind them. ‘Now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve had a few ideas about how to upgrade Ember Celica floating around for a while. Never thought I’d be using those ideas on, well...me.’  
‘We’ll see,’ Blake nodded.  
‘I might rework the firing mechanism so that it creates a more efficient Dust reaction,’ Yang suggested to herself. ‘More bang for my buck. Maybe I’ll add a blade, and be like some super cool ninja. Who knows what those Atlas techs will come up with when they...give me a _hand?_ ’ While Blake grunted at the latest terrible pun, Yang cooed to herself as another possibility came to mind, and a sly grin emerged. ‘Or maybe I can make my fingers vibrate.’  
‘Yang,’ Blake sighed. ‘You continue that particular line of enquiry, and I will stab you in the face.’  
‘Oh, come on,’ Yang teased. ‘You know I’m joking.’  
‘Yes, you’re clearly delirious from blood loss,’ Blake deadpanned, still amazed with herself for how she could smile in this situation. ‘It would be mercy.’  
‘Besides,’ Yang’s voice was low and conspiratorial, her smile as sly as it ever was, ‘all the guys and girls love Lefty just as much as I do.’  
‘Yang,’ Blake cautioned. ‘I swear to all the gods I know...’  
‘Please, Blake,’ Yang whined piteously. ‘Give me a _hand_ here, Blake.’ She blinked, and her face slackened. ‘Same pun twice in a row. Wow, I’m bad. I guess _elbow_ out for now.’ Yang’s eyelids became heavy, and her head leaned down, letting herself get some rest as they trudged along to wherever help could be. Blake could only shake her head and mutter to herself.  
‘God damn it, Yang...’

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another oneshot dealing with the immediate after Yang's disarmament.
> 
> I tried to flex my wordsmith muscles to making something punny, so I figured I'd rush out this piece of shit before the finale came up. Maiden!Cinder is coming, and the worlds will be up in arms.
> 
> I'll stop now.


End file.
